Animating Spotlight's intensity
 

Is there a way to animate a spotlight's intensity when you use intensity curves? Since the graph editor shows a light's intensity over distance, how do you change its value over time?

No it doesnt. It shows it over time. What exactly do you need to do? If you just want to animate the light's intesity over time then just key it as with any other attribute.

Alan

Animation light's intensity
 

If you click on 'create' next to 'intensity curve' in the Attribute Editor, you get a curve in the Graph Editor like on the image i've attached. The horizontal value is labeled 'lightInfo.sampleDistance', which shows the light's fading intensity over a distance. Maya's help files say the same thing. So how do you switch from looking at distance to looking at time? Thanks!

key it normally e.g. in the channel box and then look at the graph editor you will then see it over time.

Alan

It doesn't work. Nothing happens when i set keys in the channel box. I also tried first keying the intensity over 100 frames and then creating an intensity curve and got an error saying "spotlight intensity already has an incoming connection". Maybe you can explain your process step by step, so i can make sure i'm not omitting anything. Thank you!

1> create a new light
2> right click on intensity in the channel box >> key selected
3> move time slider
4> repeat step 2

that's it

Alan

Yes, of course this works. The problem is i am trying to combine keying the intensity (what you've described) with using intensity curves (a curve that represents a light's diminishing intensity over distance). They both show up in the graph editor, and from what I've experienced can only be used one per light as they occupy the same channel. If you know of a way to combine them, please let me know. The workaround I came up with is keying light's color instead.